Note 4 — Chapter III · PEGGY’S WELCOME HOME.

The author cannot refrain from recording that the magnanimous reception which the Lady of Drumsheugh is represented as according to her son’s low-born, privately married wife, was, in fact, given in similar circumstances by the widow and mother of an old Fife laird to her son’s sorely daunted, humble bride. A very different fate was hers from that of the Portuguese Inez and the German Agnes. The sagacious Scotch mother, finding that the losing game was about to be taken out of her hands, by what she did not hesitate to regard as an interposition of Providence in the illness of the laird, made her concession frankly and handsomely. Stout Drumsheugh and Balcairnie and bonnie Peggy are more than mere shadows, as the reader could not fail to see but for what is lacking in the skill of their chronicler.